


Pain

by VinHampton



Category: Original Work, Sherlock (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-02
Updated: 2014-06-02
Packaged: 2018-02-03 03:57:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1730264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VinHampton/pseuds/VinHampton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pain and how it cuts you off.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pain

The pain is orange. 

The pain is familiar but unwelcome and cuts through her core like a hot knife, intruding on already disjointed dreams. [Bullet. Teeth. Earthworm. Snow. Spasm.] Another jolt of it and her eyes are open. The pain is orange, hot, lava. Not the dental, cold, clinical pain of being shot through bone, the blue splintering, the icy fragmentation, of bone splitting. Not that. But orange and searing. Like fire or acid poured into a cavern. She is awake and exhausted and doubled over. She curls up, pressing her stomach against a pillow, pushing her fist hard against the mattress. There is no relief. 

Behind her, he is asleep. Sleep – blissful, heavy, sleep. Honey-sweet sleep, wine-dark sleep. She is so envious she almost hates him. The soft rise and fall of his chest pressed to her back, the long pauses between breaths, the relaxation of all of his muscles. In his sleep, he has tangled his legs with hers and buried his face in her hair. His arm is draped possessive-protectively around her waist. 

Orange. The reverie is broken by another paroxysm, so sharp she almost cries out. She draws her knees closer to her chest but this does nothing to alleviate it. She tries taking long, deep breaths, using the rhythm of his breathing as a guide, but the pain is the loudest electrical impulse, shocking her into an almost meditative state: nothing exists but the convulsion. 

She hazards a look at the small clock on the bedside table. 5.12 a.m. She has had just over an hour of sleep. She wants to crawl back into the delicious, numbness and darkness, but knows this is no longer an option. From somewhere behind his shoulder, the cat yawns. Vivienne doesn't belong here, on this bed like an island of forgetting. She slowly untangles herself from him, ever so careful not to wake him and worry him. The bed creaks unforgivingly as she pushes herself out of it, shivering, half from the cold, half from fatigue. She looks upon the tableau of sleepers for a few seconds, but there is no movement on their behalf. 

No, she does not belong there. 

Quietly, she finds her dressing gown and pulls it on, piling her hair in a messy sort of nest on top of her head, to get it out of the way. It's matted from sweating. She draws the curtains in the living room downstairs. It is not yet morning. Slivers of light appear between buildings, glitter-dancing on the windscreens of parked cars. A few precocious birds dare to chirp, ushering in the day, but their efforts go unanswered and before the sun rises, everything is silent. 

Vivienne does not mind the darkness, the night. She thrives in the night. There are truths one can only see in the dark. It is the stillness of daybreak that terrifies her – that liminality. There is the true witching hour, heralded by the mechanical monster sounds of the rubbish truck. 

She shivers again and puts the kettle on as another cramp gives her pause. She reaches out and presses her palm to the nearest wall for balance, until the spasm peaks and breaks like a wave, spreading into her stomach. There has been some degree of discomfort every day since she was shot, but some days and some nights are unbearable. 

Deep breath through the nose, straighten out. She makes tea out of habit, knowing it will go cold. Slowly, feeling her way along the wall, she reaches the bathroom and opens the medicine cabinet. She would give anything for morphine right now – the one thing that renders pain null. 

Pills... pills... she rummages through bottles... oxycodone. She remembers that one from Russia, after the capture and the barbed wire. She takes three, washing them down with water. She puts the bottle in the pocket of her dressing gown and washes her face, then returns to the living room. 

She lowers herself onto the sofa and gets on her side, finding something like a comfortable position. Slowly, a sort of blue begins to wash over. Crystal blue, like the sea. The blue of opioids. Öd und leer das meer. Wine-dark. Sleep comes. The most human colour.


End file.
